Louisa sat up and pul ed him back down. ‘Oh, sit down, Jeremy, you big fool! Shut up a second!’ She gripped his arm. ‘I said no.’

‘What?’ Jeremy’s mouth dropped open, and he appeared lost for the right thing to say. ‘You said no to Frank? Thought you were keen on him.’

‘Yes,’ Louisa said. ‘I was surprised, too. But—’ She rol ed onto her stomach and stared at the grass. ‘I just don’t know if that’s what I want.’

They were both silent for a moment. ‘Real y?’ Jeremy said. ‘Old Frank?’

‘Frank, yes – wel , no—’ Louisa shook her head. ‘I don’t know. He’s been different, these holidays, rather off. But I do think I love him, I suppose. Before they came here, I was so sure.’ She looked at Jeremy, her huge blue eyes wide open. ‘I thought we had an unspoken sort of agreement, that we were to be engaged, even if it wasn’t talked about. And now – I just don’t know any more.’

‘Why?’ Jeremy asked softly. ‘Something Miranda said, if you can believe that. About women, about us and what we can do with our lives. I – I do love Frank, but oh, Jeremy—’ She hit the bal of her palm against her forehead. ‘Can you possibly understand? I don’t know if you can, Jeremy. I think if I marry him, my life wil be over.’

‘Oh, Louisa, come off it.’

She shook her head, smiling, and stood up. ‘You don’t understand, I knew you wouldn’t.’ She put her hand out to reassure him. ‘Don’t worry, it’s me. I have to decide. Go to Cambridge, study hard, get a good job afterwards.’ She brushed her shorts down methodical y.

‘Can’t you do both?’ Jeremy stood up too, looking mystified.

‘I don’t think I can,’ Louisa smiled. ‘I rather feel that if I marry him, my identity, me, it wil be gone.’

Jeremy looked upset. ‘I don’t—’

Louisa put her hand on his. ‘Don’t worry, big brother,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

As they turned towards the front door, Frances appeared at the bottom of the side staircase.

‘Gosh, it’s hot. Where’s Cecily, do you know?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for her for ages.’

‘She’s with you,’ Louisa said stupidly. ‘Isn’t she?’

‘No,’ said Frances. ‘She was supposed to be, but she went to brush her teeth and write her diary up. That was half an hour ago. She’s not in her room.’ She stared impatiently across the terrace. ‘Where on earth’s she got to? I know she hates it, but it’s so very nearly done.’

And then there was a scream, and hol ered shouting, from the path towards the sea. ‘Help! Help!’

‘What on earth . . . ?’ Jeremy darted forward. ‘What’s that?’ They ran to the bottom of the terrace. Miranda was running towards them, fol owed by Archie and another figure behind them.

‘Help! Get help! Ambulance!’ she screamed. ‘Get the . . . get the ambulance!’

‘What?’ Louisa said, running towards her cousin. ‘Miranda – what’s wrong?’

Frances stood stock-stil , as if frozen to the spot. ‘It’s Cecily, Cecily.’ Miranda was racing like a madman, her hair whipping round her face. Two circles burnt red on her cheeks. ‘She fel – she stepped back and she slipped . . . Oh, God.’ She stopped and looked up at them imploringly. ‘What have I done?’

‘You didn’t do anything,’ Archie said.

Guy appeared behind them. ‘What’s happened?’ he was shouting as he approached them. ‘I heard screams – who is it? Where’s – where’s Cecily?’

‘I’l get the ambulance,’ Miranda sobbed. ‘Oh . . . Cecily . . . oh, my God.’

‘What?’ Guy stood stil . Sweat ran down his forehead. ‘Cecily?’

Frances was running towards the sea. ‘Where is she?’ She was opening the gate, but Archie stopped her. He put his hand on her arm, blocking her path. ‘No, Mum,’ he said, his face unreadable. ‘I don’t think you should go down there.’

‘Why?’ Frances’s voice broke. ‘Get off me. Why?’

Archie said very quietly, ‘I don’t want you to see her like that.’

They knew, then. As Miranda’s voice came out to them: ‘Yes, Summercove. Parry Lane. It’s the Kapoors. No, dammit, Kah poor. Come quickly!’ Her voice was breaking. ‘Please, hurry up!’

‘I’m going down there,’ Guy said, breaking away and running towards the gate. ‘I’m going . . . she might stil be al right, we have to do something.’

Miranda, emerging from the house, her pale face stained with tears, just looked at him, and then at Archie, and shook her head.

‘What happened?’ Frances said, watching her daughter. ‘What did you do, Miranda?’

Her son tightened his grip around her. ‘Mum. Don’t say that. She didn’t do anything.’

Miranda, who had opened her arms to her mother, let them drop to her side. She looked back at her, and sank onto the stone doorstep like a broken dol .

They brought Cecily’s body back up from the beach late that evening, as the sun was setting and the grey moths were fluttering around the candles they had set outside to light the way, just as the storm broke and it began to rain.

The police came, too, of course: they had to know what happened, had to see where she’d fal en, take measurements and photographs. And what happened, it would seem, is that Archie and Miranda were out walking when they bumped into Cecily, at the end of the path on her way down to the beach. Guy was walking in the opposite direction, towards the cliffs, and he heard raised voices, shouting, and then screaming. Apparently Cecily had turned and slipped, a little of the rock breaking away with her.

She had fal en down the steps, her neck broken in the fal . It had rained the day after the James’s arrival, and even in the height of summer, the steps, cut into the rock and without any sunlight, were often dank and slippery. Arvind and Frances had been advised to get them resurfaced. It was one of those things they’d been meaning to do, but the pair of them – when did they ever do what they were supposed to do?

She should have taken greater care, even Cecily who knew the path, the steps and the beach so wel . She should have been more careful. She should not have died. And though no one said it out loud, and though at the inquest a verdict of accidental death was recorded, it wasn’t enough to silence the rumours that al was not what it seemed, that it wasn’t, in fact, an accident.

There was something in the air that summer, like a poisonous cloud, growing in strength. And when it broke, like the storm that raged al that night after her death, nothing was the same again.The day after Cecily’s funeral, when they had scattered her ashes out to sea (Arvind’s idea), and everyone had gone – the mourners, the rest of the family, a stunned Guy, a teary Louisa – Frances locked her studio door behind her, and went into her bedroom. Arvind was in his study, of course.

It was a dul , wet evening, mid-August. The nights were noticeably earlier. There was a chil in the air, a suggestion for the first time that summer was drawing to a close. She held the key in her hand, staring out of the bedroom window. She gazed at the gazebo where her son and remaining daughter sat, huddled together, looking out to sea. Her eyes narrowed as she watched them; hatred, she told herself it was hatred, squeezed her heart.

‘It’s over,’ Frances said to herself.

She clutched the key tightly and shivered. Then she opened her bedside drawer and dropped the key in, next to the ring she’d taken off Cecily’s damp, cold finger a week ago. She shut the drawer and went downstairs, and sat in the big, empty sitting room until the light faded and she was alone in the dark. Miranda and Archie came in separately, and went to bed. Arvind too. None of them knew what to say to each other, so they didn’t say anything at al .

PART THREE

February 2009

Chapter Twenty-One

‘So. Miss Kapoor. Thank you for coming today.’

‘Not at al ,’ I say. ‘I’m as anxious as you are to sort this out?’

Unfortunately, I raise my voice at the end of this sentence so that it sounds as if it’s a question, not an answer.

There is silence from across the grey plastic desk. I wipe my sticky hands on my skirt and I blink wearily; I’ve had not quite four hours’ sleep.

This is good for the sleeper train, where things fal onto the floor as the carriage judders suddenly or drawers fly out as you round a corner, rousing you from your too-light slumbers. But it’s stil not much in the grand scheme of things and I am very tired. I can’t escape the feeling that I’m stil there, lying in a rocking berth. The office in Wimbledon – where my business account manager is located and thus where I have to go if I want to stop the bank cal ing in debt col ectors – is warm and my eyes are heavy. The bump on my head from my Victorian heroine-style fainting fit is stil swol en, and has turned an impressive purple colour during the night. I haven’t been home yet; I’m stil wearing my funeral outfit, ironical y appropriate for today as wel as yesterday.

Yesterday seems like a world away. The pages of Cecily’s diary are stil in my skirt pocket. They make a crumpling sound as I shift in my seat.

Ten pages, that’s al , and then – what? Nothing.

When I climbed wearily off the train this morning, I wondered if I’d dreamed the previous twenty-four hours. It would make more sense, somehow. These scant pages in Cecily’s scrawling, cramped handwriting, al too little an insight. I keep thinking of them al after the funeral, in the living room at Summercove. My family, standing around in knots, not talking to each other. The taxi ride with Octavia, the near-pleasure with which she thought she was tel ing me the truth about my mother. Was she?

I can’t think about it now. I shut my eyes again. Opposite, Clare Lomax, Local Business Manager, stares impassively at me, her hands clasped neatly on the desk. Her suit jacket is slightly too big. It looks like a man’s.